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Resto Druids Aren’t Broken – You Are

Twice in the last week I’ve run something where I was on an alt, and there was a resto druid in the group. First was a raid night where I was healing on my paladin, and the other guild brought a resto druid. And then last night I took my Spriest to ZG and the healer was a resto druid.

Both druids complained about their mana regen and their weak heals. Both specifically said “resto druids are broken” or “resto druids need X” (bigger heals, more mana regen).

Both druids were running specs with 38 or 39 points in resto, and pvp gear.

I literally facepalmed when I saw the first druid, with 39 points in resto and two in balance. Couldn’t believe what I was seeing. So I whispered her, mentioning that 3 points in Furor really help with mana. “I don’t usually have mana issues” is what she said. Which might be true if she doesn’t raid, but she was having mana problems that night.

The healer last night had the three points in Furor and the rest in resto. I asked her; she said she pvps in the same spec so she had taken pvp talents. But she was also wearing pvp gear. Including a Boomkin tier piece. She had one T11 resto pvp and one T11 boomkin pvp piece, so she wasn’t even getting a set bonus.

Look, seriously, it’s fine to run a suboptimal spec, if you want to pvp in your same spec. It’s fine to wear unoptimized pieces. But gosh darn it, don’t complain about the class needing something when you’re the one who is doing it wrong.

I had mana issues. I stacked spirit, and learned to use my trinkets and Innervate right, and my mana issues went away. I had issues with my heals being ineffective, so I learned how to heal with our Cataclysm toolset. I love my druid now. I can crank out meter topping numbers without going OOM. I’m a valuable part of our healing raid team. And it wasn’t that hard! I could just have googled some spec, stuck it in without even looking at it, and been doing better than those two druids.

Resto druid healing isn’t a faceroll, but we’re in a really good position right now. Viable at tank healing, still the best at raid healing, we’re an asset to any team.

I honestly don’t know a thing about druid healing, but I do know this … 4.0 changed a lot of things for every healing class and you cannot approach things the same way you did in Wrath. A LOT of people still have not adjusted.

Also, what is it with people and PvP gear lately? I know some dpsers who have been trying to raid in it as well.

PVP GEAR IS NOT FOR DUNGEONS OR RAIDING. There may be occasional exceptions in some slots, but in general … you’re better off with a PvE piece even if it’s blue.

because if you are trying to get gear you can only get higher ilevel gear in PvP these days…

actually “those” days for me since I heal/tank on my hunter now (in another game in a galaxy far far away).

Gear is scarce, and real hard for someone to solo for. So… if you are looking to fill raid spots you either get blue people or PvP purples. People not in a guild or a low activity guild (read as people who will answer in trade LF1M) don’t have 5 man buddies to help with heroics.

and no offense but NO (for DPS anyway) you are not better off with blues. You are just not… I got like 2k dps difference on a hunter getting all pvp purples vs ~333 stuff.

That’s 20%… improvement mileage may vary but pvp is the only way except repeated rides on the LFG failboat

I still hate healing. But I had a dream that I was glorious at disc priest healing…yes, a dream. But in reality, I am not all that great at it like I used to be. I think it’s the trying to smite the boss at the same time as healing.

I will get there it will just take more time…but I do hear that spec is more dependant on gear than some other healing classes/specs.

I really have to disagree on the avilabilty. With just solo rep grinding you can get mostly 346 and a few purples for just about any class. If that is not enough solo grinding some gold and then hitting the AH can get you a few more nice items.

The first thing I do when I get a new class near 85 is hit wowpedia.org and check all the rep rewards. Then I check what I can craft or buy crafted. Those two things cover a lot of my slots. Then I start checking the final slots and make some gear lists for where I can get what other bits…. I am pretty sure I wrote a blog about this awhile back :P
There is also BH which is pretty easy to get a group for. Also lots of BOEs drop in the new Z-Hs so there are things to be had on the AH. Behond all that… as usual… is skill. I have seen people in half purples that can’t break 10k and I have seen people that just dinged 85 hitting 14.

Not to mention that what you are describing is the assumed preparation for entry level bosses! No one faces Magmaw for the first time ever wearing full epics. That’s the point of having raid bosses that also increase in difficulty; you get all the available non-raid gear you can, slowly replace it with lower level raid boss gear, then bam, you’re facing Nef with full raid boss gear! (except for bracers; you will never get leather spirit bracers from a raid boss and will wear the Lost City blues for ever and ever -_-)

Urgh amen to that… Was made a raid leader about 2 months ago and since then every chance I’ve gotten we’ve hit Chimearon 6 times we’ve downed him and yet to see those leather bracers.

I’ve only seen the troll instance ones (nowhere near as good) once and that was on my Shaman. Still the rest of my gear has been worked on over the time I’ve been raiding on my Resto Druid starting with 333/346 gear just being replaced with loot as it drops.

12k is PLENTY to start raiding in. But you can pull 12k in nearly all blues so pvp gear is not really needed. All 346 blue with between 2 and 4 purples is MORE than enough to start raiding. And you can get all that with just rep grinds and a few heroics. We have downed more than a few raid bosses where they whole raid was geared like that or worse. We had a guy tanking Chogall in gear like that!…. ok well we failed and he got a lot more gear by the next time… but…

My hunter was raiding last week doing 12-14k we got a couple kills in and he was top dps in that raid (the guild weekday raid).

…of course this week I worked harder, got a couple more drops, went to askmrrobot, reforged, regemed, ground some badges and rep, and now I am pulling 17K.

Give me a raid where every dps is doing 12k consistantly and I we can down at least 8 of 12 raid bosses.

Resto druids have mana whats? I’m not the most awesome druid and my paladin and priest guildies aren’t the suckiest healers… and I always (always!) run oom last. Even while working on heroic bosses… Knowing when to use Innervate, tree and the trinket (I have the “mana pot” one) makes a huge difference.

For DPS and healing specs, primary stats have risen in value compared to secondary stats – up to a point that for specs that were valueing them very high in LK PvP gear *can* be better than comparably easy obtainable PvE gear. Especially if the PvE piece has to rather weak secondary stats and the PvP piece has the good one. And if it’s a weapon – who cares for their stats anyway?
On the Cata/LK healing approaches – I am the lucky number off. I – have healed Cata style for more than four years…